What’s Hitchcock’s Thing With Blondes?
This October, Citizen Jane is premiering a host of new content in a new series, This One's For the Ghouls: Women, the "Other" and Horror. Focusing exclusively on the horror genre, this month will contain spine-tingling essays and reviews discussing our Stephens students' favorite horror films. We'll dig deep (six feet deep, in fact) into the roles and portrayals of women in horror, as well as the abject -- the "other" -- and how those elements interact in some of the most well-known (and/or gruesomest) films in the canon. Check back here soon for more!
Alfred Hitchcock one of Hollywood’s greatest directors had many great films including Psycho, The Birds, Rear Window, and many more. However, all these films have the same thing in common: they have women with blonde hair as the lead. Many journalists, writers, and people in Hollywood also found it very odd and thought Hitchcock could have at least used other actresses. The blondes in Hitchcock’s films were typically sophisticated women that “carried” themselves as ladies, just by the way they would light and hold their cigarettes.
Hitchcock favored Tippi Hedren and Grace Kelly the most as both were in more than one of his films, notably in The Birds and Marnie. I believe had that the “lady-like” sophistication Hitchcock liked, especially demonstrated by Hendren in The Birds and by Kelly in her many Hitchock appearances (Rear Window, Dial M For Murder, and To Catch A Thief) had a sense of, not only grace and beauty, but also innocence.
Hitchcock believed that blondes made the “best victims,” and also liked the way he could control women with blonde hair like it gave him some kind of sick sexual “manpower” thrill. According to The Hairpin’s writer Tatum Dooley and her article The Problem With “Hitchcock Blondes,” Hitchcock was pretty much obsessed with having possession and control. In the article, Dooley writes a comment from Tippi Hedren: “It was sexual, perverse, and ugly.” Hedren also found that Hitchcock would become aggressive on set if he didn’t get what he wanted Hedren, which was sex.
According to Chron writer Everett Evans, Hitchcock confessed to torturing his leading ladies. Evans states that Hitchcock said that “we don’t torture women enough.” I remember watching the 2012 film Hitchcock (which was based on true events), and how they talked about filming theshower scene in Psycho. I remember watching a scene where Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) who went around the set and would torture and scare Janet Leigh (Scarlett Johansson). According to a New York Times interview with the real Janet Leigh in 1995, Leigh said that she “never took showers again.”
Hitchcock was very good when it came to keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat – he was, after all, the “Master Of Suspense.” But he was very, very, flawed when it came to women and I believe he had no respect for them, especially women with blonde hair. Men back then and even today could or can get away with anything. He was a good director but not a good person.